A380 unveiling, 1/18/05, Live.

"Colin W Kingsbury" wrote:

Free Flight is not an incremental step--it's a complete change of doctrine
and I don't trust making that kind of leap.

You are absolutely right. Certainly the concerns you identified are real. One of
the things I do is design avionics for large aircraft, so I'm in the middle of a
lot of the discussions on how to manage the transition, which has to be
evolutionary - not a huge leap.

AJC wrote:

The thing is 0.4-0.5% under weight. Here's just one current link:


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...c&refer=europe

Interesting.... Wonder how it will be when they weigh the completed plane.

"nobody" wrote in message
...
Colin W Kingsbury wrote:
travel will grow. There are to the best of my knowledge no 747s
operating in
domestic service in the US (except the occasional repositioning flight)


It wasn't that long ago that United was advertising 747 service between
JFK and LAX on TV.

Actually, it is a few years ago. For the past several years, they were
flying 767-200's mainly. Only a few months ago did they retire these birds
and replace them with their "p.s." configured 757-200's.

Since then, the airline stopped competing on service, and competed on
frequency. So that meant downsizing aircraft and putting more of them.
And that has led the airlines to very inefficient schedules and costly
fleets that have far more planes in them than necessary.

United's "p.s." stands for "premium service." They've upgraded the inflight
service in all three classes, and have a 34" pitch in economy - not just
Economy Plus. And they still serve food (for the time being, at least) in
cattle class.

the 737 is also Southwest's achile's heel. Legacy carriers might come
back with 747 or 38 to serve betwene large cities with fewer
frequencies. The lower operating costs per passenger would allow them to
undercut Southwest.

Not going to happen. The legacies remember the old days when one airline
would bracket another's jumbos with smaller jets and ended up eating their
lunches (Braniff did that to American with 727's vs. DC10's in the late
'70's). Business travelers want frequency.

In other words, the minute the legacy carriers stop competing on
frequency and number of cities served, you might find the return of the
big planes in the USA between the large cities.

And if Virgin can undercut the other carriers on USA-London flights,
what will BA and AA and UA do ? Lose money on the runs by matching
Virgin's fares ?

They'll have no choice. They can't aford to lose market share. Don't
forget that Virgin, for example, has limited feed beyond London; American
and United have tremendous feed beyond their U.S. point of entry. They need
to match frequency to have decent onward connections. That's why most AA
and UA flights between London and the U.S. are on either 767's or 777's
rather than 747's.

They should know by now that you can't charge a premium for higher
frequency. Passengers will flock to the low cost carrier to such an
extent that the LCC will have to increase it frequencies to match demand.

Hub-and-spoke carriers are being bled to death by the point-to-point
LCCs,
who mostly operate 737-size planes.

But the 737 size plane has become the de-facto norm within the U.S. these
days (except for the MD80's AA, AS and DL fly).

The whole "hub and spoke" thing is a sham. Southwest is probably just as
hub-and-spoke as legacy carriers are. They just know how to operate a
hub efficiently and they only serve profitable routes and only have the
capacity that demand can fill.

When you look at the TV programme "Airline", it seems clear to me that
both LAX and Midway are operated as major WN hubs.

They really aren't true "hubs" as the percentage of "connecting" vs. "O&D"
passengers is less than elsewhere.

[snip]

I think the differences in the 380 have more to do with real comfort.
For instance, if they have a duty free shop, instead of trolleys, if
they have a snack bar instead of pax having to wait for FA to come to
their seat etc etc, this would change the way people experience air
travel. It would be more akin to train travel than to conventional air
travel. And in terms of premium classes, the added floor space will
allow the ailrines to give pax much more than on smaller planes.

How so? At best it will reduce costs by say 25%, so instead of
paying $500 for a ticket to Heathrow I might pay $375,

Look at what happened when Southwest and now Jetblue started to charge
less. Not only did people flock to them, but the legacy carriers have
been bleeding to death because they try to match the prices without
equivaoent reduction in operating costs.

"AJC" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:15:05 -0700, "Matt Barrow"

http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=901

"Tsunami-struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it
must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs
against
its fishing industry.

While millions of Europeans are sending aid to Thailand to help its
recovery, trade authorities in Brussels are demanding that Thai Airlines,
its national carrier, pays £1.3 billion to buy its double-decker
aircraft."


You'd be wise to do better than 'inform' yourself from an American
'Neolibertarian community portal' (their description, not mine!).

Coming from the fascist EU that's rich!!!


You'd be wise to learn to read since the point is the TIMING.

The
melodramatic start to your quote indicates the level they work on, and
my how they twist reality.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4054251.stm

"Thai Airways had been proceeding towards buying eight Airbus aircraft for
$2bn.
All seemed to be going smoothly until the country's Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra intervened to allege that discrimination by the European Union
against Thai imports of sea food and poultry was a problem.

Until the EU changed its way, he indicated, Thailand would be loathe to buy
aircraft from Airbus."

Take your EU fascist/statist crap and shove it up your ass.


Matt
---------------------
Matthew W. Barrow
Site-Fill Homes, LLC.
Montrose, CO

Morgans wrote:

They will
also not have to arrive at the "big push" times at the major airports.

Oh, they probably will. The "big push" times are caused by the fact that those
are the times business travelers prefer to arrive or depart.

George Patterson
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

"nobody" wrote in message
...
Colin W Kingsbury wrote:

Since then, the airline stopped competing on service, and competed on
frequency. So that meant downsizing aircraft and putting more of them.
And that has led the airlines to very inefficient schedules and costly
fleets that have far more planes in them than necessary.

the 737 is also Southwest's achile's heel. Legacy carriers might come
back with 747 or 38 to serve betwene large cities with fewer
frequencies. The lower operating costs per passenger would allow them to
undercut Southwest.

This is what Delta is trying to do with Song- using 757s which are about 25%
(?) bigger than the 737/A320-size a/c all the LCCs are running. This may
work well on NY-Fla. flights which are consistently packed, but there's a
reason that not a single domestic LCC is running anything that big. The key
to this is load factor: you're better off running out of seats in a small
plane, than having empty ones in a big one. In the past 4 years that I've
been flying commercial a lot out of Boston, I've gone from connecting to
hubs in a 757, to a A320, to a DC-9, and finally to an RJ. This is not a
coincidence.

In other words, the minute the legacy carriers stop competing on
frequency and number of cities served, you might find the return of the
big planes in the USA between the large cities.

Except that in many cases the LCCs are now offering frequencies that beat
the majors. Airtran flies from BOS-ATL just as often as DL does and JetBlue
goes to OAK and LGB multiple times a day.

And if Virgin can undercut the other carriers on USA-London flights,
what will BA and AA and UA do ? Lose money on the runs by matching
Virgin's fares ?

US carriers have done fine on trans-Atlantic traffic because Virgin can't
get you to any US airport that isn't touched by an ocean. Of course if
congress ever drops the ban on cabotage this could get interesting.


The whole "hub and spoke" thing is a sham. Southwest is probably just as
hub-and-spoke as legacy carriers are. They just know how to operate a
hub efficiently and they only serve profitable routes and only have the
capacity that demand can fill.


The basic principle of the hub system is that a passenger should be able to
get from city A to city B in the least amount of time and connections. By
feeding traffic into hubs on fixed schedules, you are able to accomplish
this. In fact, flying from A-B is not the point, it is flying A-B-C where
flying A-C would not in and of itself be profitable. Southwest optimizes
around A-B flights; being able to do A-B-C is simply coincidental. Even five
years ago it was often very difficult to get from A-C even where SWA served
both cities. You either had to take three planes or wait a long time for
connections. Increasingly as their traffic volume goes up, they are starting
to have a high enough frequency of flights to reduce this effect, but there
are still a whole lot of places they don't go that the legacy carriers do.


Does Southwest ever sell A-B-C cheaper than it sells A-B ???? The legacy
carriers often do that. And they probably lose lots of money just trying
to match another airline.


I have connected through Minneapolis on my way across the country many times
on flights costing $400 roundtrip. OTOH, I have never managed to buy a
BOS-MSP flight for less than $800. Why? Because NWA owns MSP, they can
demand monopoly prices for direct flights. Of course flying BOS-MSP costs
less than BOS-MSP-SFO, but that's not the point. I can get from BOS-SFO in
any of several dozen ways. But if I want to go from BOS-MSP without
connecting in Atlanta or Chicago, I *have* to fly Northwest, and so they can
demand a higher price. This is the curse of living in a hub city- you get
direct flights to everywhere, but you pay a fortune for them.

If B is a large city, than it is only normal to have A-B and C-B
flights. It makes B a hub. But that doesn't force that airline to sell
A-B-C ticket for a low price to matych a LCC that does A-C on a smaller
aircraft that matches the actual demand between A and C.

Once the door closes, unsold seats become worthless. If you're already
flying the plane, you're better off filling them cheap than leaving them
empty.


But compared to Asia and Europe, the US
is larger and more sparsely populated, so similar patterns may or may
not
emerge. Growth in East/Southeast Asia alone may well make the A380 a
success.

On the other hand, the window for trans-atlantic flights is fairly
narrow and it becomes less economic to run multiple flights at about the
same time of day compared to running one bigger plane.

Yes, but this depends too on total demand. Let's say that on a given day
there are 10 747s scheduled to fly between JFK and LHR, say 4000 pax. You
could switch one of these to an A380, thus raising capacity to say 4300, but
that doesn't mean that there will suddenly be 300 more people wanting to
take that flight. OK, so it's cheaper, so maybe you poach them off a
competitor. Now your competitor buys an A380 and matches your price. As
prices drop across the board, perhaps two hundred more people decide to buy
tickets, but you've now got 4600 seats to fill, and only 4200 passengers.
Let's say all 10 747s are replaced and we have 6500 seats to fill. What now?
Your only choice is to reduce frequency or start channeling more passengers
in from stations down the line. Maybe you stop flying from BOS-LHR and
funnel everybody through JFK. Well, guess what? The guy with the 7E7 can fly
from Philly and Boston to LHR just fine, which will stymie your attempts to
move more people through JFK. This is Boeing's bet, anyway, and as a heavy
traveler it makes sense to me.


However, consider long haul flights of more than 8 hours. They require 2
crews. Running 2 7E7s on a 14 hour flight instead of 1 380 requires
double the number of pilots (8 instead of 4) and probably more FAs as
well (but less than double).


Of course, it will always be more profitable to fill one big plane on a
route than two smaller ones, but there are plenty of international routes
that can easily fill a 767/777 but not enough volume for a 747/A380. The
jumbos only win if you can fill the seats.


The 380 is to the 747 what the 7E7 is to the 767.


Wrong answer. The 7E7 has the same number of seats as the 767, in other
words, it's the same plane but cheaper to operate. You can drop it right
into your existing schedule/route structure without thinking about it.

The A380 is a much bigger plane than the 747. Unless the airlines expect
more passengers to show up magically they will have to make some changes. In
some cases (say FRA-SKG) where they have two 747s departing on the same
route within an hour tor two of each other, OK, this will be easy. I suspect
that's behind about 90% of the A380's demand right now. The question as I
asked was, what next?

We'll know in a few months if the 380 has delivered on promises or not.

Performance figures are important but the market is determinative. It
doesn't matter if the plane performs exactly to spec if the passenger demand
isn't there.


What I do question is the notion that this will somehow "transform" air
travel.

I think the differences in the 380 have more to do with real comfort.

Har har. Just wait 'til you've got 800 people in cattle class. Great for
ticket prices but hell for comfort.

travel. And in terms of premium classes, the added floor space will
allow the ailrines to give pax much more than on smaller planes.

Yes, but it won't get any cheaper.

How so? At best it will reduce costs by say 25%, so instead of
paying $500 for a ticket to Heathrow I might pay $375,

Look at what happened when Southwest and now Jetblue started to charge
less. Not only did people flock to them, but the legacy carriers have
been bleeding to death because they try to match the prices without
equivaoent reduction in operating costs.

"Colin W Kingsbury" wrote in message
ink.net...

"nobody" wrote in message
...
Colin W Kingsbury wrote:

Since then, the airline stopped competing on service, and competed on
frequency. So that meant downsizing aircraft and putting more of them.
And that has led the airlines to very inefficient schedules and costly
fleets that have far more planes in them than necessary.

the 737 is also Southwest's achile's heel. Legacy carriers might come
back with 747 or 38 to serve betwene large cities with fewer
frequencies. The lower operating costs per passenger would allow them to
undercut Southwest.

This is what Delta is trying to do with Song- using 757s which are about
25%
(?) bigger than the 737/A320-size a/c all the LCCs are running. This may
work well on NY-Fla. flights which are consistently packed, but there's a
reason that not a single domestic LCC is running anything that big. The
key
to this is load factor: you're better off running out of seats in a small
plane, than having empty ones in a big one. In the past 4 years that I've
been flying commercial a lot out of Boston, I've gone from connecting to
hubs in a 757, to a A320, to a DC-9, and finally to an RJ. This is not a
coincidence.

In other words, the minute the legacy carriers stop competing on
frequency and number of cities served, you might find the return of the
big planes in the USA between the large cities.

Except that in many cases the LCCs are now offering frequencies that beat
the majors. Airtran flies from BOS-ATL just as often as DL does and
JetBlue
goes to OAK and LGB multiple times a day.

And if Virgin can undercut the other carriers on USA-London flights,
what will BA and AA and UA do ? Lose money on the runs by matching
Virgin's fares ?

US carriers have done fine on trans-Atlantic traffic because Virgin can't
get you to any US airport that isn't touched by an ocean. Of course if
congress ever drops the ban on cabotage this could get interesting.


The whole "hub and spoke" thing is a sham. Southwest is probably just as
hub-and-spoke as legacy carriers are. They just know how to operate a
hub efficiently and they only serve profitable routes and only have the
capacity that demand can fill.


The basic principle of the hub system is that a passenger should be able
to
get from city A to city B in the least amount of time and connections. By
feeding traffic into hubs on fixed schedules, you are able to accomplish
this. In fact, flying from A-B is not the point, it is flying A-B-C where
flying A-C would not in and of itself be profitable. Southwest optimizes
around A-B flights; being able to do A-B-C is simply coincidental. Even
five
years ago it was often very difficult to get from A-C even where SWA
served
both cities. You either had to take three planes or wait a long time for
connections. Increasingly as their traffic volume goes up, they are
starting
to have a high enough frequency of flights to reduce this effect, but
there
are still a whole lot of places they don't go that the legacy carriers do.


Does Southwest ever sell A-B-C cheaper than it sells A-B ???? The legacy
carriers often do that. And they probably lose lots of money just trying
to match another airline.


I have connected through Minneapolis on my way across the country many
times
on flights costing $400 roundtrip. OTOH, I have never managed to buy a
BOS-MSP flight for less than $800. Why? Because NWA owns MSP, they can
demand monopoly prices for direct flights. Of course flying BOS-MSP costs
less than BOS-MSP-SFO, but that's not the point. I can get from BOS-SFO in
any of several dozen ways. But if I want to go from BOS-MSP without
connecting in Atlanta or Chicago, I *have* to fly Northwest, and so they
can
demand a higher price. This is the curse of living in a hub city- you get
direct flights to everywhere, but you pay a fortune for them.

You have other alternatives (AA through DFW, Frontier or United through
Denver, just to name two. And NW can't command a premium for MSP as a
hub -it isn't significantly preferable to any other hub.


If B is a large city, than it is only normal to have A-B and C-B
flights. It makes B a hub. But that doesn't force that airline to sell
A-B-C ticket for a low price to matych a LCC that does A-C on a smaller
aircraft that matches the actual demand between A and C.

Once the door closes, unsold seats become worthless. If you're already
flying the plane, you're better off filling them cheap than leaving them
empty.


But compared to Asia and Europe, the US
is larger and more sparsely populated, so similar patterns may or may
not
emerge. Growth in East/Southeast Asia alone may well make the A380 a
success.

On the other hand, the window for trans-atlantic flights is fairly
narrow and it becomes less economic to run multiple flights at about the
same time of day compared to running one bigger plane.

Yes, but this depends too on total demand. Let's say that on a given day
there are 10 747s scheduled to fly between JFK and LHR, say 4000 pax. You
could switch one of these to an A380, thus raising capacity to say 4300,
but
that doesn't mean that there will suddenly be 300 more people wanting to
take that flight. OK, so it's cheaper, so maybe you poach them off a
competitor. Now your competitor buys an A380 and matches your price. As
prices drop across the board, perhaps two hundred more people decide to
buy
tickets, but you've now got 4600 seats to fill, and only 4200 passengers.
Let's say all 10 747s are replaced and we have 6500 seats to fill. What
now?
Your only choice is to reduce frequency or start channeling more
passengers
in from stations down the line. Maybe you stop flying from BOS-LHR and
funnel everybody through JFK. Well, guess what? The guy with the 7E7 can
fly
from Philly and Boston to LHR just fine, which will stymie your attempts
to
move more people through JFK. This is Boeing's bet, anyway, and as a heavy
traveler it makes sense to me.


However, consider long haul flights of more than 8 hours. They require 2
crews. Running 2 7E7s on a 14 hour flight instead of 1 380 requires
double the number of pilots (8 instead of 4) and probably more FAs as
well (but less than double).


Of course, it will always be more profitable to fill one big plane on a
route than two smaller ones, but there are plenty of international routes
that can easily fill a 767/777 but not enough volume for a 747/A380. The
jumbos only win if you can fill the seats.


The 380 is to the 747 what the 7E7 is to the 767.


Wrong answer. The 7E7 has the same number of seats as the 767, in other
words, it's the same plane but cheaper to operate. You can drop it right
into your existing schedule/route structure without thinking about it.

The A380 is a much bigger plane than the 747. Unless the airlines expect
more passengers to show up magically they will have to make some changes.
In
some cases (say FRA-SKG) where they have two 747s departing on the same
route within an hour tor two of each other, OK, this will be easy. I
suspect
that's behind about 90% of the A380's demand right now. The question as I
asked was, what next?

We'll know in a few months if the 380 has delivered on promises or not.

Performance figures are important but the market is determinative. It
doesn't matter if the plane performs exactly to spec if the passenger
demand
isn't there.


What I do question is the notion that this will somehow "transform" air
travel.

I think the differences in the 380 have more to do with real comfort.

Har har. Just wait 'til you've got 800 people in cattle class. Great for
ticket prices but hell for comfort.

travel. And in terms of premium classes, the added floor space will
allow the ailrines to give pax much more than on smaller planes.

Yes, but it won't get any cheaper.

How so? At best it will reduce costs by say 25%, so instead of
paying $500 for a ticket to Heathrow I might pay $375,

Look at what happened when Southwest and now Jetblue started to charge
less. Not only did people flock to them, but the legacy carriers have
been bleeding to death because they try to match the prices without
equivaoent reduction in operating costs.

They have no choice but to match price to maintain market share. And don't
forget the legacies serve places the LCC's wouldn't consider serving.

Lee Witten wrote:
Proven or not, both have the chance to be 'disruptive technologies'.

Suppose the A380 is wildly popular. Its low cost per pax makes most
747s obsolete, and everywhere you now run a 747 an A380 is needed to
remain competitive.

A large part of a plane's success is how the airline sets up the
interior. For long hauls, entertainment, food, and with the 380, if
there is anything to do while standing up. (Rememberring that airlines
strongly discourage passengers to stand up for long and to have seat
belts on at all times when seated in case of turbulence).

Where Virgin will kill BA is with the premium class. BA won't be able to
match what Virgin will provide in first and business class because BA's
planes just don't have the space. So airlines that traditionally rely on
premium passengers and who have not purchased the 380 are at risk.

So that will definitely be a disruptive change.

The 747 seems quite popular as a freighter. But it may go the way of the
MD11, except that there may not be a FedEx to adopt every stray 747 it
can find.

I think that the real danger for the 747 comes not from the 380, but
from the Antonov 124. They have recently decided to restart the
production line of the 124s. (Antonov is in Ukraine, but got lost of
funds from Russia, that puts the recent elections in perspective, same
applies to the company in Ukrtaine that builds the Kurs automated
docking system for Russian spacecraft).

If the 380 takes the pax business and the small package business from
the 747, what is left is large bulk cargo, and that is where the 124
beats the 747.

would imagine Boeing would have to do what Harry said, and make a big
plane too. That would be quite disruptive to Boeing.

Unless the current rift/raft between EU and USA results in allowing
Boeing to get lots of help, it will not be able to justify developping a
380 competitor. The market just isn't big enough to get Wall Street to
give Boeing 15 billion bucks to sell 250-300 planes.

Once the beast is flying commercially with known performance metrics,
then we will be able to compare how the 747 fares against the 380 in
terms of orders for passenger versions. Until now, the airlines have
just simply postponed large plane decisions, awaiting to see what both
Boeing and Airbus would do.

This period is about to end, and we've already seen the thai, UPS and
now the chinese orders coming in, since the confidence level of the 380
actually delivering on prmises is rising.

United and Northwest will be the real test for Boeing. Will they get rid
of the 747 alltogether and replace it with 777s, will they order new
747s once they are back in business, or will they order the 380 because
it is (allegedly) better than the 747 ? Right now, they are in no shape
to order anything and United has reduced its 747 fleet.

Suppose the 7E7 is wildly popular. It's light weight, efficient
engines, 3 day assembly time and very low maintainence cost makes all
competing metal aircraft (A300/A310/A330/B757/B767) obsolete.

I heard Boeing state that the all-composite fuselage wasn't lighter than
what they could have done with modern aluminium stuff. Will it be
lighter per pax than the 767, you bet. Will it be lighter per pax than
the 77, most likely. Will it be lighter than the A350 ? Probably not
much lighter, if any.

Remember that Airbus also gained much experience with both aluminium and
composites on the 380, and in some ways are a step ahead of Boeing. The
top part of the A380 fuselage is made from a aluminium/composite
laminate for instance. Airbus uses cold welding technique to fuse
aluminium parts instead of using rivets. And has experience with all
composite structures such as the A380s tail fin and elevators (which are
as big as 737's wings).

So *IF* they add that experience to the 350, they may be able to produce
something that is quite comeptitive with the 7E7. Where the difference
may lie is in the bleed air issue.

new business model (just design and do final assembly, leave the rest to
partners) gives it the large profits needed to make composite
replacements to 737, 747 and 777.

Nop. Because the same "partnering" practice also spreads the profits
around. You can bet that the japanese cgovernment which is footing the
bill for a large portion of the 7E7 will want its subsidies back.


I imagine Airbus would have to redo
their entire product line too, and that will be very disruptive,
especially if their access to launch aid is curtailed.


The biggest disruptive technilogy I see is the bleed air issue. If this
proves to be a big winner (not sure of that), then both Boeing and
Airbus will be under pressure to redo their product lines to incorporate
this. And if such a change requires a totally new type certificate, this
will be extremely disruptive to both Boeing and Airbus.

However, consider Airbus' situation:

Its 340 is essentially dead.
The 330 is getting its makeover into the 350.
The A380 is brand spanking new.

So what is left now is the 320 line which, while younger than the 737 in
many ways, is also starting to mature. If Boeing decides to redo the 737
from scratch, and Airbus decides to do a 320-NG, Airbus would be doing
the same mistake as Boeing did in the 1990s by keeping the 737.

In fairness though, the difference in expertise/knowledge of
aerodynamics and engines between the late 1980 and now is less than
between the late 1980s and the 1960s when the 737 was conceived. So the
320 would see less of an improvement in a total rebuild than the 737 would.

we'll all know in time. I do believe one thing that Boeing is saying:
from now on, all future transports will be made of composites (the
advantages in weight, maintenance and fabrication expense are impossible
to ignore) and that will change a lot of things.

Are composites really cheaper to make ?

In terms of maintenance, I am not so sure that composites have proven
themselves. After the Queens crash, the NTSB realised that there was no
real expertise in diagnosing composites and they had to go to NASA to
get various tail assemblies studied to see if there was some widespread
composite problems in tails or not etc etc. Airlines didn't really have
the tools to do that.

The 7E7 will force the development of totally new maintenance procedure
for aircraft structures.

Also, the lack of bleed air and introduction of new systems to replace
it will also require new training and maintenance procedures. Only time
will tell if those prove to be more relaibale than current systems.

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 03:26:39 -0500, "H Pinder"
wrote:

It would be normal corporate behaviour to calculate the "liters per
passenger per 100 Km" using the most optimistic factors. Such as maximum
number of seats, every seat filled, best city pair, no delays of any type,
etc. etc.
The reality will be interesting to see.
Harvey
"alexy" wrote in message
.. .
nobody wrote:

Interesting tidbit from Bob Bliar:

The A380 consumes only 3 litres of fuel per pax per 100km, equivalent to
a fuel efficient diesel car.

But what is the operating cost per 100 km?


Interesting stat, but the followup discussion here points out a
question on exactly what this stat is. Is it fuel burn per passenger
mile at max passenger load (i.e., the 380 carries 110 times as many
passengers as the 5-passenger car, but burns less than 110 times as
much fuel per mile) or fuel burn per passenger mile at typical
passenger loads (i.e., the 380 at a typical passenger load of, e.g.,
450 carries 300 times as many passengers as the car at a typical load
of 1.5 people, but burns less than 300 times as much fuel per mile.

But in the car that fuel is only a few cents per mile. On average it's
probably only about 3 to 5% of the operating cost of cars that are
kept 4 years or less. The first three years my TA cost near 57 cents
a mile while the gas at today's prices would be about 10 to 11 cents
per mile. Back then it was about 8 cents a mile. Even at the
inflated gas prices the cost of a car would probably still put gas in
the 5 to 10% range.


Obviously, such a statistic based on capacity is far more significant
than one based on average use. 3 liters/passenger per 100KM? I suspect

Still, the bottom like on something that size will depend not on the
ultimate, but the average. At the end of the year the bean counters
are interested in how much it cost them per passenger mile and the
cost of the fule may, or may not become significant. (it probably
will)

there are MANY 5-passenger cars that will go further than 100KM on 15
liters of fuel, but not may that will go 100KM on 4.5 liters of fuel,
if 1.5 is the average load of the car.

The 380 will probably be the least expensive long haul plane flying,
IF they can use the majority of the seats.

A friend went to Alaska recently in a 747. He commented that they
could have put that many passengers in a commuter. OTOH when my wife
came back from New Zealand last year, every seat was full. The ones
in front of her had three air sick kids which made it a memorable 13
hours.

The one flight probably didn't pay for the taxi time, but the other
probably did quite well.

And my wife's old mini-mini van used to get 38 mpg. Now that it has
near 200,000 miles 262,000 km it doesn't do quite so well. It
probably takes the extra gas to pump out all that oil.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com


--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked
infrequently.

"Jeff Hacker" wrote in message
om...

"Colin W Kingsbury" wrote in message
ink.net...

I have connected through Minneapolis on my way across the country many
times
snip
demand a higher price. This is the curse of living in a hub city- you
get
direct flights to everywhere, but you pay a fortune for them.

You have other alternatives (AA through DFW, Frontier or United through
Denver, just to name two. And NW can't command a premium for MSP as a
hub -it isn't significantly preferable to any other hub.

Of course if you're willing to connect you have choices, but if you want to
go direct to or from a hub, in many cases your only choice is the hub's
owner. Thus they are able to command monopoly, i.e. highly-inflated ticket
prices on that route. This explains why A-B-C tickets are almost invariably
*cheaper* than A-B tickets: it's not that they're giving the A-B-C tickets
away, it's that they're raping fliers going from A-B. In fact, if you book a
roundtrip flight from A-B-C and get off at B (what is known as "hidden city
ticketing") there's a very good chance the airline will cancel the rest of
your itinerary for violating the conditions of carriage, especially if you
do it more than once.

In fact, the monopoly power (or lack thereof) that certain carriers have
over hubs is probably the main reason they are still surviving. It's
probably the only place in their operations that consistently makes money.

-cwk.